Recent experiences with coal-oil burners lead me to adopt, for camp use, the No.0 single-wick stove of the “Florence Machine Co.,” whose excellent wares attracted so much attention at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.  The No. 0 Florence stove will sustain the weight of one hundred and fifty pounds, and is one of the few absolutely safe oil stoves, with perfect combustion, and no unpleasant odor or gas.  This statement presupposes that the wicks are wiped along the burnt edges after being used, and that a certain degree of cleanliness is observed in the care of the oil cistern.  I do not stand alone in my appreciation of this faithful little stove, for the company sold forty thousand of them in one year.  In Johnson’s Universal Cyclopdia, Dr. L. P. Brockett, of Brooklyn, N.Y., expresses himself in the most enthusiastic terms in regard to this stove.  He says:  “For summer use it will be a great boon to the thousands of women whose lives have been made bitter and wretched by confinement in close and intensely heated kitchens; in many cases it will give health for disease, strength for weakness, cheerfulness for depression, and profound thankfulness in place of gloom and despair.”

Boatmen and canoeists should never travel without one of these indispensable comforts.  Alcohol stoves are small, and the fuel used too expensive, as well as difficult to obtain, while good coal-oil can now be had even on the borders of the remote wilderness.  The economy of its use is wonderful.  A heat sufficient to boil a gallon of water in thirty minutes can be sustained for ten hours at the cost of three cents.

For lack of one of these little blessings—­which the prejudice of friends had influenced me to leave behind—­my daily meals for the first two or three weeks generally consisted of cold, cooked canned beef, bread and butter, canned fruits, and cold river water.  The absence of hot coffee and other stimulants did not affect my appetite, nor the enjoyment of the morning and evening repasts, cold and untempting as they were.  The vigorous day’s row in the open air, the sweet slumbers that followed it at night in a well-ventilated apartment, a simple, unexciting life, the mental rest from vexatious business cares, all proved superior to any tonic a physician could prescribe, and I became more rugged as I grew accustomed to the duties of an oarsman, and gained several pounds avoirdupois by the time I ended the row of twenty-six hundred miles and landed on the sunny shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

Sunday broke upon me a sunless day.  The water of the creek was too muddy to drink, and the rain began to fall in torrents.  I had anticipated a season of rest and quiet in camp, with a bright fire to cheer the lonely hours of my frosty sojourn on the Ohio, but there was not a piece of dry wood to be found, and it became necessary to change my position for a more propitious locality; so I rowed down the stream twelve miles, to Big Grave Creek, below which, and on the left bank of the Ohio, is the town of Moundsville.  One of the interesting features of this place is its frontage on a channel possessing a depth of fifteen feet of water even in the dryest seasons.  Wheeling, at the same time of the year, can claim but seven feet.  Here, also, is the great Indian mound from which it derives its name.